Read Online What's Really Hood!: A Collection of Tales From the Streets by Wahida Clark, Bonta, Victor Martin, Shawn Trump, Lashonda Teague - Free Book Online

team played the block. Pills held the money, Nu-Nu held the work and Lil Mike held the heat.
    Wiz parked his car in the middle of the street, because Goldsmith was divided by a concrete partition that doubled as a parking
     lane. When he got out, his young team gathered around him.
    “What up, homeslice?” Pills, the youngest at fourteen, greeted him while lighting a cigarette. “When you gonna let me push
     the whip?”
    Wiz chuckled. “Mutherfucka, when you buy it.”
    Pills pulled out four large stacks of money, rubber-banded together. “Shit, I got the money right here.”
    Wiz took the money and put it in his glove compartment. “Yeah, you got
my
money right here.” Wiz checked his watch. “And didn’t I tell y’all to watch for truancy during school hours? They see y’all
     and come runnin’ up in my shit. Y’all wanna drop out in kindergarten, so what, just don’t get me fucked up too.”
    “Man, I’m in the eighth grade,” Nu-Nu, fifteen, stated factually.
    “
S’posed
to be in the tenth grade. Y’all don’t never go to school,” Lil Mike, fifteen, scolded them. He was the only one who did attend
     occasionally, even if it was only to show off his money, gear and jewelry.
    Nu-Nu pulled out a modest knot of his own. “Man,
this
my school right here, and I’m at the top of my grade!” Nu-Nu and Lil Mike dapped each other and Wiz smiled proudly.
    Of course they should be in school, but so should he,so what could he really say? At least they weren’t running around hungry and dirty, or worse, high.
    “Yo, yo, Pills. Here she go!” Lil Mike whispered excitedly. They all turned their attention to the corner and watched Crystal
     turn the corner and head straight for them.
    “Yo, yo, if she ain’t got enough, tell her to see me. If she let me fuck her,
I’ll
put up her high,” Mike said lustfully. He and his crew had already learned the power crack gave them over women two and three
     times their age and what they would do for the drug. They all wanted Crystal, but none had managed to hit.
    “Y’all some young freaks,” Wiz accused, eyes still on Crystal. For some reason he didn’t understand, he was disappointed that
     she was a smoker.
    “Yo, Nu-Nu, come here,” Crystal called. She stopped a few houses away with her hands in her windbreaker pockets, doing the
     crackhead shuffle.
    “Yo, money, she smokin’ that?” Wiz asked Lil Mike and Pills as Nu-Nu went to serve her.
    “A hundred miles an hour,” Pills confirmed, still fantasizing about the day she’d fall into his power. They always did.
    Wiz shook his head, analyzing her up and down. He could see she couldn’t be much older than him, pretty, and she had business
     about herself.
How the hell did she get caught up?
He wondered what made seemingly sensible people smoke after seeing the damage it could do.
    As she turned to walk away, her profile sparked a vague familiarity in his mind, and before he knew it, he called out, “Ay
     yo, shorty! Hold up!”
    Wiz bopped over to her, hearing Pills remark, “I git seconds, Wiz.” He ignored the comment as he approached her. Crystal’s
     mind was too preoccupied with the plastic in her palm for her to notice anything about Wiz, except for the fact he was holding
     her up, and only natural curiosity made her want to know why.
    “Excuse me, but… where do I know you from?” Wiz asked sincerely, but to Crystal’s ears it sounded like a hoochie “can I kick
     it” line, and a weak one at that.
    She quickly dismissed him like,
no
, and walked away, leaving Wiz like a piece of brushed-off lint.
    He started to say something slick, but he didn’t want his young boys to think some feen had dissed him. He walked back over
     to the car, reached under the passenger seat and produced another Ziploc bag full of clips. He handed them to Nu-Nu, who quickly
     took the pack in the house.
    “So what up, Wiz? What time we goin’ to the LL concert tonight at Sensations?” Pills asked